Love Me Back Read Online Free PDF

even make it a year? Tell me, he said.
    Yes, I said.
    Chlamydia, he said. Fuck you, Marie, he said. The baby was crying louder. He took his keys off the counter and went to the door. He put on one boot and lost his balance while he was putting on the other and dropped his keys and then he said Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! and jammed his foot into the boot and stood up and punched the wall next to the door. It made a hole in the sheetrock and he bent over and held his hand between his legs. He picked up his keys and slammed the door behind him. The baby was crying so hard she was losing her breath between screams. I went into our bedroom to get her and the neighbor above us stomped on the ceiling and shouted Shut up, man!
    I lay down on the bed with the baby and shushed her. She smelled so sweet and she was so soft and warm. Shemade the most urgent little sounds as she latched on to my nipple. Shh, I said. She stopped crying and nursed until she fell asleep again.

    Business had been so sluggish the night before Thanksgiving that Damon, the assistant manager, cut down to just me by eight thirty, and I walked out with $32, twenty of which was given to me by a man who had a cup of tortilla soup and a Shiner and said he was sorry I had to work the night before a holiday. When I got out I went to the Albertsons next door and bought bananas, brown rice, black beans, a yellow onion, a can of Ro*Tel, and everything to bake a pumpkin pie. I never baked so I didn’t have any of the spices or sugar or flour at home, or a pie pan. I had eight dollars left after checking out so I stopped for gas on the way home.
    The next day I made the pie using the recipe on the back of the can. We were still getting WIC cereal and milk so breakfast was Kix and bananas. Thanksgiving dinner was the rice and beans with the onion and Ro*Tel added for flavor, which is what we usually ate, and the pie. He said the pie was the best thing he had ever eaten in his life. I let the baby eat some of the filling off my fingers and she went nuts for it too, flapping her short baby arms. Then we all fell asleep at about five and he got up to pee a couple hours later. When he came back he said For some reason it hurts when I piss. I said Really? but I didn’t say anything else, even though I knew that I had given Damon chlamydia and I knew I’d slept with my husband since then. Damon said it felt like he was pissingglass, and when he went to his doctor they stuck a Q-tip up his dick and he said it made him cry it hurt so bad. I went to the health department because we didn’t have health insurance. They said I did have it, even though I didn’t have symptoms. They gave me the medication to get rid of it. Damon asked me who else I’d been with because there was no way he’d given it to me. I said John and Luke and he said John gave it to you. I didn’t ask how he knew but I knew he was right. Luke had just broken up with a girlfriend he’d been with for six years and he’d told me he had never cheated on her. I had to tell John and Luke and I never saw them except at work so I had to tell them at work. John didn’t act surprised. That again, he said. Luke said You’re kidding and then he said I knew it was a bad idea. A few days after that there was an awkward moment when Damon was voiding something for John at a computer screen and Luke and I walked up at the same time to ring. I had told John about Damon and Luke but I hadn’t told Luke about the other two because I knew he would have cared. Damon caught my eye and fumbled his manager card. I could feel Luke looking at me so I walked away like I had forgotten something.
    I had thought about telling my husband but I kept putting it off. The day I decided I had to tell him I went to the apartment complex’s laundry center to wash a load of whites. His undershirts, the baby’s burp cloths and diapers and onesies, and our bath towels and dishrags. Our apartment was right across the parking lot from the laundry